Righteousness
by Numminen
Summary: The City of Martole, CO begins to feel the drastic effects of radical preacher-vigilante Gregory "The Reformer" Cultridge and his plans.


October 25th, 2026

Johnathan Lowelle sat in his blue sweater and sweatpants shivering with his arms buried in one another at the bus station at 6th Street and Solomon Drive. The sun was coming up over the Anthem hills and lent scattered rays of its light to the submissive City of Martole. It was a desolate sight on the streets as much of the city still slept this cold morning, a brief moment of eternal peace at this poor bus stop in the north city. Johnathan just sat there, in a trance like state as a brief breeze ran through his brown hair. A trance-like state was upon him, and for a moment the man stopped shivering.

A car passed down 6th Street, its villainous roar breaking the quiet serenity of nature. Johnathan briefly recoiled, dazed as he accessed his surroundings. Finally feeling his surroundings were safe once again he stood and walked to a tree whose branches shielded the bench from the sky and whose roots were only stopped by the concrete from hugging the bench's very legs. Johnathan checked his watch, six o' clock, and buried his hands into his pockets. It was a cold morning, perhaps fifty degrees Fahrenheit, but this was not strange for Martole, especially in October. But yet he shivered still, and he _sweat. _He sweat and sweat and sweat. He felt like he was drowning in this fluid when a friendly sight approached. Here came the bus, a white bus with two green stripes over its center door. Johnathan scrambled through his wallet to find his pass, rummaging past his driver's license, hospital ID, and credit cards. Finally he found it, a platinum bus card which was rigid in its form and sharp at the edges due to its creation just two days before.

The bus noisily braked to a stop. A brief pause settled upon the stop which was subsequently interrupted by the opening of the bus's door revealing a relatively short woman, however to be fair Johnathan was slightly taller than the average man, in a pressed uniform at the wheel. Johnathan stood for a moment, accessing her short blond hair and relative plainness of her appearance. The woman stared back too, unsure of the correct course of action to deal with the strange new rider.

"So, are you gonna get on or what?" the woman finally said, growing impatient from Johnathan's lack of initiative.

The piercing quality of her voice shocked Johnathan back into consciousness. He looked around for a moment and then replied, "Where's Ed? Doesn't he run this route?"

"Called in sick, something like the flu," the woman explained, "looks like you may have it too."

Johnathan took a moment to look at himself, not realizing before the extent of his sickly appearance. He was still sweating, and looked to be covered in a film of the filth, he still shivered, and his sweater was soaked in stains (some mucus and some sweat). He then saw the bus card, shining in his hand as morning light bounced off of its plastic sides.

"So, staying or leaving? I do have a route to make." The woman asked with a sense of urgency and truth to the last sentence.

Johnathan looked at his watch, six o' seven, and contemplated whether or not to go to work today. After a few seconds of rushed decision, the debt-ridden intern decided it was better to still go and he stepped onto the bus. "Yeah, sure," he grunted out, stifling a cough as he approached the pass reader near the woman. He placed the card into the machine and after a brief moment it had registered. The words 'Platinum Pass: Indefinite' showed on its primitive monitor and the card was spit out of its mouth.

"Well then, aren't we special?" the woman stated jokingly as she closed the doors to the bus and turned forward towards the front window.

Johnathan simply nodded with a slight smirk and then turned towards the interior. There were two rows of seats with their backs towards the windowed sides of the bus, each facing each other and the center aisle. Beyond that was a step to a raised back with three rows of seats facing the front and a fourth seat occupying the whole back wall unlike its split cousins that presided in front of it. Being near the north end of the line, there were few people riding. An older man with a white beard and greyed hair sat near the front, crippled by age. In the back, a young woman no older than twenty with long black hair and earphones in her ears. She obviously wasn't paying attention to anything and stared out a window into the city around her. And lastly, a middle aged latin man sat opposite the door, in a business suit with clean cut black hair, looking down at his iPad and the news on the tablet. Johnathan lost balance for a moment, as the bus began to move once again down the street at a respectable speed. Johnathan didn't care about the speed though, he didn't care about the people nor the time now; he just cared about his health now. Johnathan scrambled to a chair, just left of the side door and sat. He stifled the coughs once more and just stared out the window opposite of him. He thought of praying, but figured it did no good to him, an atheist. And so he pondered the nature of things for what seemed like hours, but lasted only moments.

The bus came to a jerking stop once again. Johnathan could hear the muttered curses of the driver as she fiddled with a lever. Meanwhile, the middle aged businessman seemed to snap back to reality from the stop and got up to leave. As he approached, Johnathan bowed his head attempting to stifle the violent coughs he had held back so long. The man placed his hand on a pole for the standing near the door and pressed a green button to open the side door. As he did so, a violent barrage of coughs ripped forth from Johnathan. Within these coughs millions of droplets of mucus flew from his mouth and into the air, some landing on the businessman's hand.

"Cover you cough," arrogantly commanded the businessman and with a quick wipe of the back of his hand against his pants he exited the bus. Johnathan coiled in on himself, almost to a fetal position attempting to console himself. As the businessman walked down the street eastwards towards his destination, an irritating itch pestered him from his face. He raised his hand, still holding onto select remnants of the mucus particles to the itch and rubbed his fingers upon the skin. As he breathed in, the mucus particles flew into his own nose and many were trapped by its defenses. But a single particle flew through and dropped into the throat where a virus, deeper within the particle emerged into his system. As this very event happened, the city bus's engine let out a mighty roar and began to move once more farther south and within a minute had disappeared from sight…

October 18th, 2025

Yet Johnathan Lowelle and his story were not the beginning, and they were far from the end as well. He, like all the souls of Martole, was intertwined into a greater story, one that would change the very futures of all who lived in the world.

To know where this story ends, we must follow it from the start, in a prison in the Anthem hills east of Martole. Here we meet Gregory Cultridge, a resident of the Norwald Facility or "Devil's Locker" as the inmates called it. The facility held all sorts of folks: murderers, thieves, and con artists crammed under the same roof due to the lack of state funding. This diversity lead to a unique cultural system to be developed within the walls. The con artists and other frail criminals survived by trade, the thieves and other moderates independently or in small protective cliques. And the most severe offenders lived independently, with tyrannical power over the lower groups. Gregory Cultridge however did not fit in this system, much like how he did not fit in the system in the world outside of the Locker.

Gregory was a southern boy, raised by the dissident ideas of the South (particularly Georgia) both by society and family. Also engrained in him were his self-sufficiency and skills with a gun, harnessed to a precision by his outdoorsman father. Gregory was an only child, and antisocial throughout most of his childhood. At age eighteen, he enlisted with the US Army and was deployed into Afghanistan. Here, taking an unnatural liking to the war, he became a charismatic leader amongst his fellow soldiers yet some believed his fascination with killing to be largely strange. But his residency in Afghanistan was short-lived. Within his second month of serving, he was shot in the arm and stranded in the desert after his troop was massacred. Playing dead for hours, he was eventually rescued but at cost was his arm which medics had to place a tourniquet around to stop the blood loss. Honorably discharged after this, Gregory returned to the States. His family having died over the years and lacking money he soon became involved with the criminal underworld. However, idealistic Gregory would not settle to make money in these activities and, to the dismay of the criminals in Georgia, began a crusade against them. While effective, he was still hunted by the police and the retaliatory actions of the criminal underworld won him no fans in the public. Shunned and betrayed by his close confidants, Gregory fled Georgia as Police were closing in on his location. And so Gregory took upon a life of many names and lived town by town until reaching quiet Martole. Something changed here, and many debate what actually transpired. What is known however is that Gregory took up God here, and once more began his crusade to purge the criminal underworld but this time did it by both book and blunderbuss. For five years, the "Reformer" as he called himself terrorized the criminals of Martole. For five years, Martole actually grew peaceful, until the Durstone incident. At the Bank of America Durstone Branch, a suburb of Martole, three armed robbers took seven hostages. In Gregory's subsequent attempts to dismantle the robbers, a bomb was detonated under the bank, imploding the Martole Metro system's second line. Around two hundred civilians died in the train crash and explosion. Gregory and two of the robbers survived, and were arrested. After a short trial, the crusading Gregory was sent to prison for life, the two robbers with him. And so the anonymous "Reformer" died, and now remained Gregory Cultridge.

Retaining much of his life outside the walls of Norwald, Gregory had become the Facility's reverend. He preached day in and day out to those lost souls who would listen to him. And for those who dared to defy the teachings of his good book? They were found dead, stabbed or suffocated often, but no action was taken for these damned souls. That was, until the arrival of Dr. Louis L. Laine or "LLL" as he was nicknamed by the residents. The psychiatrist began a sweeping program of reforms. Calling the facility inhumane, he began diagnosing numerous psychological disorders among the inmates. Among these "troubled" folk was Gregory Cultridge. But Gregory knew better, some quack in a white coat didn't know nothin' about him. Gregory would humor the Doc though, saying he too knew that there were many a sick man in the walls, but he wasn't one of them. And so, Gregory and the Doc befriended one another, despite their differences of opinion and the bars that often separated them. However, the society of Norwald Facility would soon change drastically and all its residents would have to access their loyalties and goals.

October 18th, 2025: Warden Robert Istan is replaced with Warden Edward Geovani, after rioting in the east wing. Warden Geovani orders a general lock down for the following week and anarchy engulfs the Norwald Facility…


End file.
